In 1958, Marshal Sarit Thanarat became prime minister of Thailand following a bloodless coup. This book offers a comprehensive study of Sarit?s paternalistic, militaristic regime, which laid the foundations for Thailand?s support of the US military campaign in Southeast Asia. The analysis documents the ways in which Sarit shaped modern Thai politics, in part by rationalizing a symbiotic relationship between his own office and the Thai monarchy.

Thak Chaloemtiarana teaches and writes about Southeast Asian studies, issues of contemporary Thailand, and the early Thai novels in the Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, New York.He is also the Director of the Cornell Southeast Asia Program, having served in that position since 1998.